Singapore's Newest Billionaire Made $2.1B Fortune From Nothing

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
#1
http://www.forbes.com/sites/neerjajetley...ing/print/

Goh Cheng Liang is one of Singapore’s best-known and least-celebrated tycoons. He has neither featured in any rich lists nor ever talked to the press, save for a one-off interview in 1997. Yet some of Singapore’s most prominent landmarks, like the high profile hospital Mt. Elizabeth and the Liang Court shopping mall at Clarke Quay, have been built by this reclusive businessman.

Goh never went to school. He was born to a poor family in a one-room tenement in 1928, one of four siblings. As a boy, he sold fishing nets and worked in a hardware store, learning business skills that were to shape his destiny. In 1949, when the British were auctioning off surplus stocks from World War II, Goh bought all the barrels of rotten paint for a song. With a Chinese dictionary of chemicals in hand, he went about mixing solvents, pigments and chemicals to make his own brand of paints called Pigeon. The following year, the Korean war broke out and an import ban landed Goh a whopping profit windfall.

Business was booming when an opportunity to tie up with Nippon Paint of Japan surfaced. Goh took the plunge with a 60-40 holding in a joint venture called the Nipsea Management Group. From nothing rose a paints conglomerate whose Nippon brand is today a household name in Asia. The Nippon brand now sells in 15 countries outside of Japan with some 15,000 employees and factories in 30 locations. Its annual turnover stands at $2.6 billion. Son Goh Hup Jin oversees the company run by professional managers.

Goh’s career has been the gritty journey of an entrepreneur. He never missed an opportunity to create, build and sell businesses to unlock their value. Over the years, he invested some of his profits from the paint business into property by building shopping malls, hotels, serviced residences, as well as a retail distribution business with Japanese partners, a contract manufacturing electronics business, specialty packaging, logistics, a food manufacturing operation in America and even a mining company in China! When his U.S.-educated son, Hup Jin, set about professionalizing some of the group companies and taking them public, Goh carved a parallel private empire with his longtime partners and employees under Yenom Industries. It owns serviced residences, gold courses, marinas, hotels and housing developments in Gulf Habour and elsewhere.

Over the years, Goh has been selling his stake in the publicly listed companies. He sold his 59% holding in Liang Court for $175 million to Pidemco Land in 1999. The $1 billion electronics service maker Omni Industries was sold to Celestica of Canada in 2001. Mt. Elizabeth was sold off, too. More recently, along with Crown Holdings of the U.S., he is taking listed Superior Multi-Packaging private.

Goh has come full circle, retracing his steps to his core competency in paints. Early this year, he made a $751 million bid for an additional 30% stake in Tokyo-listed parent Nippon, but quickly retreated in favor of growing the Asian business. He still makes news, though more for his generous endowments to scholarship funds, cancer research and education through the Goh Foundation, rather than his business moves.
Reply
#2
to hit big time, need that first bucket of gold....
"... but quitting while you're ahead is not the same as quitting." - Quote from the movie American Gangster
Reply
#3
Rainbow 
mmm...
for many people, it takes money to make money.

but, I always think that it's our idea, Idea coupled with right actions that makes us money.

ok... at least, it works for me.
Live with Passion, Lead with Compassion
2013-06-16
Reply
#4
To make big money in stocks is more difficult than doing business.
Ultimately all boil down to three 'rights', be it business or working for others!
Meet the 'right' person and do e 'right' thing at the 'right' time.
The thing about karma, It always comes around and bite you when you least expected.
Reply
#5
Mr Goh shows us that he never stops doing business, he never stops making $, and he never stops donating generously...

A sterling example indeed!!! Big Grin
1) Try NOT to LOSE money!
2) Do NOT SELL in BEAR, BUY-BUY-BUY! invest in managements/companies that does the same!
3) CASH in hand is KING in BEAR! 
4) In BULL, SELL-SELL-SELL! 
Reply
#6
wow..didn't know such a person exist in singapore
Reply
#7
this story strikes a familiar tune I heard several years ago maybe is the same guy.

I think having money is not enough you must also be in the right place at the right time and also take guts. Buying all that paint was a big gamble for somebody who wasn't rich at that time to begin with.
Reply
#8
Just met a guy who went to teach CFA in China at the start of the boom and that's where he met a lot of China investment professionals who started to have CFA. That's where his contacts started and rolled.

Reminds me of Chiang Kai Shek being the principal of every general that graduated from his military school...
Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. –William A. Ward

Think Asset-Business-Structure (ABS)
Reply
#9
I heard he is very low profile but high level folks will know him. He got two sons and made his fortune with paint and strike lucky iirc.
I did not cut lost on one of his counter but average down instead. The price bounce back and made my first double.

Just my Diary
corylogics.blogspot.com/


Reply
#10
Goh bought all the barrels of paints from the British in 1949, one year before the import ban due to korean war, 6 years before LKY won his first election, and 11 years before the formation of HDB and the start of the massive public housing programme. Imagine the amount of paint needed to paint the blocks by the developers and the rooms by the home owners. The industrial paint demand also up due to industrialization activities of a growing economy.

If I had the chance to meet Goh, I would like to ask him if it was due to luck or his foresight. In 1949, how was he able to foresee the subsequent increase in demand for paint?
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 9 Guest(s)